Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

E-commerce spending rolls on; Free shipping critical

By | December 5, 2011, 3:50am PST

Summary: ComScore’s data—along with other information from IBM’s CoreMetrics and ShopperTrak—will likely contribute to the clicks killing bricks argument for retail.

E-commerce spending has held its Cyber Monday momentum and remains strong courtesy of free shipping deals, according to comScore.

The research firm noted the following:

  • E-commerce sales are up 15 percent for the week ending Dec. 2;
  • The last week featured three $1 billion plus days;
  • 64 percent of transactions included free shipping.

Coming up: Great Debate: Is e-commerce killing brick and mortar?

ComScore provided the following charts:

A few observations to ponder:

  • ComScore’s data—along with other information from IBM’s CoreMetrics and ShopperTrak—will likely contribute to the clicks killing bricks argument for retail. We have a Great Debate on the topic. If anything I see e-commerce, social, physical stores and mobile all blending together. The retail experience won’t be zero sum.
  • The free shipping deals mean retailers need to get their logistics down so they can offset the margin hit. The advantage here goes to early e-commerce players such as Amazon.
  • Free shipping appears to be the price of admission to even play in the e-tail space.

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Topics

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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